#alternate alternate Montreal Gazette WordPress.com [track?event_type=PAGE_VIEW&noscript=1] IFRAME: //www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-MKM4ZNQ * Opinion Gallery of the latest Aislin, Boris and Gigot cartoons * Monarque’s Olivier Visentin, Jérémie Bastien, Olivier Fontaine, Lisa Yu and Richard Bastien: a new standard for elegance. Local Food Reviews Lesley Chesterman's favourite new Montreal-area restaurants of 2018 * The new Champlain Bridge is slowly coming together in October 2018. Local News  The new Champlain Bridge is finished — mostly * Science Snowy owl invasion: Is the Arctic no longer Arctic enough? 5 / 5 Editor's Pick slider ‘You try to forget’: Man remembers alleged abuse at St. Joseph’s Oratory Pierre-Yves Asselin joined the children’s choir when he was 8 years old. The abuse, he says, started early and lasted years. Jesse Feith, Montreal Gazette Updated: November 1, 2018 "It's the kind of thing you try to forget," 68-year-old Pierre-Yves Asselin said. "But it always comes back to you." John Mahoney / Montreal Gazette Share Adjust Comment Print Warning: This story contains explicit content. A week before the Supreme Court of Canada is set to hear arguments over whether Montreal’s St. Joseph’s Oratory should be included in a sexual assault class action suit, one alleged victim is speaking out for the first time about the abuse he remembers suffering at the iconic institution. Pierre-Yves Asselin, now 68, says he was repeatedly sexually abused — between the ages of 8 and 17 — at the hands of oratory staff and members of the Congregation of Holy Cross. “It’s the kind of thing you try to forget. That you try to not think about,” Asselin said from his Verdun apartment Wednesday. “But it always comes back to you.” Asselin has never spoken to anyone about the abuse he suffered, including his family. He says he first thought of opening up about it after hearing of the congregation’s settlement with victims in 2013, but hesitated to do so. Hearing more and more about Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals — and the more recent movement against sexual harassment and sexual assault — convinced him he needed to speak out. From a young age, Asselin knew he wanted to be a musician. His father played the cello and violin professionally and was the music director at several chapels around Montreal. So joining the St. Joseph’s Oratory children’s choir when he was 8 seemed like a perfect fit. But the abuse, Asselin says, started early and lasted years. The memories have always gnawed at him. Some are vague, others vivid. He says the first incidents came when he was 8 or 9, while showering at the oratory’s on-site dormitory for children. Two female instructors would often enter the shower and insist on scrubbing him down. He knew it wasn’t right, he says, but was more confused than anything. Then, a bit later, he remembers being brought down to the basement of what was called Manoir One on the oratory’s grounds, where he says a Holy Cross brother sexually abused him for the first time. He recalls the feeling of the man’s rough beard against his face, him forcing his tongue into his mouth, and feeling the brother’s erect penis against his stomach as he pushed against him. “That happened two or three times,” Asselin said, “and then one day he disappeared.” At 11 or 12, Asselin says, a Holy Cross father called him into an upstairs parlour at an on-site residence. The father acted as a sort of guidance counsellor to the children, Asselin said, and they were encouraged to confess to him. But once alone in the room with him, Asselin was asked to take his pants off so the father could inspect him, he says. “He said, ‘Maybe we need to make sure you’re in good health and everything is OK.’” But to Asselin, who aspired to play the organ from the moment the oratory installed its Grand Beckerath Organ in 1960, some of the worst kinds of abuse came from a man he admired the most: the lead organist at the oratory, who took him under his wing as a student. Sitting on the bench with their backs to the organ, Asselin says, the organist would often rub his thighs or take Asselin’s hand and place it on his own thighs. The abuse, he says, continued in different forms for years. “I didn’t want to stop him, because I didn’t want to lose access to the organ. That’s what I feared,” he said. “It always happened at the oratory, or at his house, and he was an employee of the oratory.” While spending the night at the man’s house when he was 17, Asselin says the man forced himself on him and tried to get him into bed. Asselin refused, and it was the last time the man tried to abuse him. Asselin would go on to enjoy a successful organist career of his own, working internationally from 1975 to 1995, but he says the abuse never left him. He’s often wondered if he was the only one to suffer what he remembers going through or if he was simply too young to realize it was happening to others around him. He’s also thought about trying to forget it all, to somehow repress the memories and move on. But he hopes sharing his story instead could help others. “Will it change anything? I don’t know,” he said. “But there are more chances of making a difference by speaking out than by not.” According to Sébastien Richard, an abuse survivor and spokesperson for church abuse victims in Quebec, Asselin’s experience — and his decision to speak about it so many years later — is typical for many victims. “Like it or not, it always stays with you. You can’t act like it didn’t happen,” he said. “You can put it away, put it to the side, but inevitably there’s an event that will happen that will make it come back up.” In 2013, the Congregation of Holy Cross apologized and paid up to $18 million to compensate 206 victims for abuse that occurred at three Quebec institutions. The class action suit did not include St. Joseph’s Oratory. A second class action, which named the oratory along with other Holy Cross institutions, was launched when roughly 40 more alleged victims came forward after hearing other men share their stories through the lawsuit. The oratory was included in the suit amid allegations that some of the abuse occurred there. The suit was first rejected by Quebec Superior Court in 2015, but then allowed to move forward by the Quebec Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court of Canada accepted to hear the oratory’s appeal earlier this year. To Richard, who will be travelling to Ottawa for next Wednesday’s hearings, the case, among other things, is “a question of access to justice.” He said the average age of those wanting to participate in the suit is 80. In some cases, he added, their health is failing and time is running out. “We’re talking about people who’ve lived with this for a very, very long time,” he said. jfeith@postmedia.com Twitter.com/jessefeith Related * Supreme Court to hear St. Joseph’s Oratory appeal in class action case * ‘A long and tortuous road’: Catholic brother’s guilty plea brings relief for victim, but not closure * From the archives: Brothers stand accused Suicide crisis: Nunavik leaders call on governments to take 'urgent action' Salon de la mort: How to talk about death while celebrating... This Week's Flyers Comments We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. 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